As the Director of People and Culture in a growth company, I have my hands in every stage of the employee life cycle, including the recruiting and hiring of employees at Business.com.

In 2014, I personally held approximately 372 phone interviews and 67 in-person interviews for roles ranging from sales to engineering and everything in between. We are expanding our sales team this year, and I expect those numbers to dramatically increase in 2015.

For the past three years in a row, Business.com has been named one of the Best Places to Work in San Diego, and a big part of that is the emphasis we place on our people and the role they play in our culture. As part of my process in evaluating talent, I look for patterns and over the last year have observed some pretty stark differences between candidates that get hired and those who do not get a call back.

Here are my tips to help those who may have been out of the interview market for a while, or those of you who are new to the process. Read the full entry

You know the old adage “the day you stop learning is the day you die”? We live and work by that ideology here at Business.com, and we’re not alone. As reported in Forbes, Bersin by Deloitte’s 2014 Corporate Learning Factbook analysis of the U.S. training market showed spending on corporate training grew by 15% last year to over $70 billion. The highest growth rate in over seven years.

Why are companies spending time and money investing in employee education? Josh Bersin shared in the Forbes article: “not only do more than 70% of organizations cite ‘capability gaps’ as one of their top five challenges, but many companies also tell us that it takes 3-5 years to take a seasoned professional and make them fully productive.”

Similarly, brands from Starbucks to utilities companies, are tapping programs like Customer Experience Training to better train their staff’s and in turn create a better customer experience. Educating employees not only makes your team better at their jobs, but can directly affect your bottom line. Read the full entry

At the start of a new year, there is a distinct feeling of both professional and personal optimism, coupled with renewed dedication to our pursuits. We also take time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t in the past year, and refine strategies, priorities and goals. To say that Business.com had a pivotal 2014 would be an understatement; we completely rebuilt our business from the ground up with the goal of revolutionizing B2B Media.

Our planning led us to several key conclusions in 2014. First, while B2B marketing is a huge market with more than $50B spent annually, it is also highly fragmented. This fragmentation has created significant complexity for B2B marketers and existing business-focused digital media sites have struggled to strike the right balance of a strong and recurring value for readers while delivering high quality engagement at scale for their advertisers. We felt it was time to solve these issues for business decision makers and marketers alike. Read the full entry

You’ve been in business for quite some time. You’ve had many successes (and failures), learned valuable lessons and have experience that a younger you would’ve killed for. You are an expert.

At Business.com, we work with experts like you everyday. You’re our readers, clients and colleagues, and now, you’re our writers. We designed the Market Expert Program to be a mutually beneficial partnership, in which we provide branding and exposure for your valuable insight, which is shared with the more than 2 million people that read Business.com every month.

Market Experts are an elite group of entrepreneurs and executives that span the sectors of marketing, sales, technology, finance, HR, leadership, entrepreneurship and management and more. They are the definition of a thought leader: they are authoritative, influential and ahead of the curve. Read the full entry

It’s a challenge many companies are facing. Your sales team needs leads but prospects and customers require far more information today than any sales rep could deliver via a sales call. When a prospect isn’t yet ready to pull the trigger, how do you keep your brand, product and solution top of mind as they make their way through the decision making process?

In delivering over 1 million high-quality sales leads over the last 3 years, we know this: the key to successful conversion is in the ability to nurture leads into sales. Forrester Research shows that companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. The challenge? Most companies aren’t set up properly to link demand generation and nurturing together, ultimately missing out on sales opportunities. Read the full entry

What turns a good job into a great one? It’s all about the culture. For three years in a row, we’ve been named one of the best companies to work for in San Diego by the San Diego Business Journal, due largely in part to our dedication to company culture.

After working in a variety of different office environments, joining the team at Business.com was a breath of fresh air. Yes, the company was doing exciting things and the job itself was an incredible opportunity. But the culture was something totally unique.

Business.com puts heavy emphasis on commitment, hard work, and collaboration, but we’re also dedicated to encouraging fun and getting to know each other. As our CEO Tony Uphoff put it to me in my interview with him, business IS personal, and your coworkers are much more than just that.

In addition to weekly happy hours, quarterly offsites and company-wide competitions like Cube Wars, we like to go all out for holidays—and Halloween is no exception. Dressing up is strongly encouraged, and to sweeten the pot, we have a costume contest that awards the most creative getups.

Below are some Business.com’s festive team members from today’s Halloween celebrations. Tell us your favorites in the comments below. Read the full entry

Business names. They are the very first introduction anyone has to a brand or business, so when choosing a name, business owners tend to follow some basic rules. Many try to make it relevant and memorable, and, of course, some have more success than others.

Working in the lead generation business you see a lot of companies in a day. Some stand out more than others, and some you may not even believe are real until you see their website or call and someone verifies that, yes, it is an actual company.

The great thing about companies like this (other than the mid-work-day distraction they cause) is that they are memorable. These companies make my coworkers and me talk about their names and share their business with others, and at the end of the day that’s what all businesses are aiming for, right? Free branding and exposure. Read the full entry

They say there’s no such thing as a stupid question. But “they” are wrong. There are plenty. And when you ask silly things during the hiring process in particular, your hiring decision can be just as stupid as the questions asked.

HR managers and small business owners usually ask the right questions. Questions like Why do you want to work for us? and Why did you leave your last job? But sometimes, interviewers get too creative and ask off-beat, sometimes offending and illegal questions. Here are some of those questions:

“What is your favorite color?”

Unless you’re hiring an art director and are looking for an insightful reasoning to back the answer, don’t ask this. A program developer has every right to love the color orange, even if it doesn’t match his skin tone.

“What do your normally dream about at night?”

This is creepy and way too personal. You might be innocently asking about a candidate’s overall life aspirations, but dream interpretation is not the way to go about it. Instead try, “Tell me about your dream job.”Read the full entry

What’s in a name? As Juliet stated in William Shakespeare’s inimitable tragic poem, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” reasoning that a name is irrelevant to function. Over the past few years, the professional world has taken this notion to heart by throwing out traditional job titles in favor of creative, imaginative, and sometimes, downright ridiculous monikers.

While the tech industry and marketing folk have adopted this new professional naming style, others are not as keen to jump on the bandwagon. Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of revolutionary recycling company TerraCycle, reasons that a specialized “title gives [employees] a feeling of importance; it suggests that the company is acknowledging their expertise and effort.”

But that same title might prove to be an issue later down the line when interviewing, argues recruiting firm Coburg Banks: “with the average CV looked at by a recruiter for no longer than 10 – 20 seconds, candidates calling themselves either a wizard or a ninja will quickly be laughed out of the running for a new position.” Additionally, crazy titles can be perceived by potential clients and colleagues as pretentious or silly. Read the full entry

Social media sharing has completely changed digital marketing. In a competitive marketplace, consumers turn to brands they trust. Social media gives companies the power to establish trust value by expressing personality, developing relationships, and demonstrating thought leadership.

Companies that engage in social sharing have the opportunity to nurture consumer relationships and turn those consumers into a brand advocates. The consumer behavior shifts from simply purchasing products, to consistently engaging with the brand on a regular basis, consuming and sharing the brand’s content, and telling their contacts, colleagues, associates and friends about the products and services the company offers.

If you aren’t sure if social sharing for business really works, consider this: traditional advertising is only trusted by 14% of people, 74% of people rely on social media to make purchasing decisions and they are 71% more likely to purchase based on social media referrals. And if that still doesn’t convince you, how about this statistic from Zuberance: Just a 12% increase in brand advocacy can double your revenue growth rate while boosting market share.